Instead of saving a whole set of a half finished or half-started idea, I save the good ideas as clips. If you drag an Ableton clip to a folder in your user library, Ableton makes a clip, complete with preview.
The , later, when I’m looking for another element for a track, I might try some of these out. They’ll get automatically warped to the current tempo or scale (for midi).
I name the clips, and file them in folders (bass loop, melody loop, etc)
I think this has to do with fundamental differences between seeing and hearing.
Sight allows us to dart our eyes from one thing to another, to look at different things, some closer and some farther away from us. This property of eyesight is used in in video where a quick succession of short clips is used. We are accustomed to building our visual reality out of rapidly changing, disjointed images.
Hearing, on the other hand, in its natural state, is centered on the person and is not prone to sudden changes of auditory “perspective”. It expects more continuity in order for the person to make sense of what they are hearing. And our psycho-auditory system employs sophisticated techniques to distinguish one sound, or one speaker, from another. Cutting from one thing to another, therefore, is more jarring in the auditory realm.
I don’t see how planning or setting limitations fits into your model of creativity. There are, I think, plenty of people on this forum who compose in a more programmatic fashion, narrowing the scope of what is possible from the outset of the process.
What you’re describing sound to me like a “right brain->left brain” process. A variation on “record drunk, edit sober.” Not saying it’s bad. But I’m skeptical that the model can be applied to every creative process.
I would say if you decide to generate a melody by rolling dice, then that decision itself is the “improvisation”, the spark of inspiration. Rolling the dice and writing down the results is the “recording”. If you then just release that as-is, it’s probably not going to be very good imo. The “editing” comes from deciding what to do with it next, which parts to keep and which to remove, how to give it structure. Does it repeat? How many times?
You have an idea, you try out the idea, you fix it down in whatever medium you need to use, then you decide what to do with it next. Then you repeat the process again to add more elements.
I say this just because I believe a lot of people underestimate the importance of editing and don’t look at the bigger picture practice of picking and choosing what to keep and what to discard. There’s too much romanticizing the idea of “recorded in one take” or assuming that doing lots of editing is somehow cheating. So the question of whether editing can be a part of composing is actually totally nonsensical to me. The most brilliant composers in history who had music flowing directly out of their brain onto paper probably still erased and changed some notes or threw some pages away.
Great answer re picture vs sound editing
For my part I’m not questioning whether editing can be part of composing, was just interested in musicians who use it as a central method, I guess I’m thinking of someone like Alex Patterson from the Orb who would record hours of improv and collage it together into more structured pieces. Often bringing together wildly different soundscapes into one song
A classic example is Bitches Brew where the band jammed in a fairly freeform way and recorded really long takes and then producer Teo Macero found the best parts and edited them together into a structure, repeating certain sections to create motifs.
I’ve been working this way with a partner, we just get a beat going and improvise on top of it for 20-30 minutes, trying out different parts and different sounds, then go back and take all of the good ideas and give it some structure.
I loved editing dialogue when I had a podcast, but for some reason I find editing my own music compositions almost impossible.
I find it hard to pinpoint the boring stuff and ruthlessly cut it out. And even when I can, its hard for me to create smooth transitions that don’t kill the flow or sense of narrative.
Song Mode helps, though. I’ve found it’s easier to listen back, figure out what isn’t needed, and then just remove those rows in Song Mode and then record a new take. Somehow this actually takes me less time and energy. (Or at least it feels like it does?)
Ok yeah interested in this, similar to how Can worked as well. So when you jam do you also think about intro sections verses choruses etc or just totally free expression and work it out later? Like do you ever find you’re missing something after you’ve structured it?
A slightly different take on the above was Public Enemy/The Bomb Squad supposedly all just jamming unlistenable nonsense with samplers etc. then trying to find a snippet that would work as a loop.
I’ve always wondered if a key component of this approach is that it’s often a different person doing the editing. I think it’s easier to apply that kind of critical ear to someone else’s work than your own. Though letting things sit always helps.
Oh yeah good one. I also saw a quote recently from someone in the b52s that they would just get a riff going and sing a bunch of random ideas on top for a half hour and then the producer would have to write it all down and help them structure it into an actual song.
Well to be fair we haven’t actually finished anything yet. 
But no I think more in layers. We get a bass line looping and then I play around with different synth sounds and write different riffs on top. And I just have a feel for what I’ve already got and what could be needed.
Like if I have a cool lead arpeggiator type thing going and I know I’ve captured a good chunk of time of that, then I’ll switch to maybe a pad sound and record something with that for a while. If I know I’ve come up with a couple of different interesting lead hooks I know I’ll be able to edit them together into some kind of A & B section later.
And if I know I’ve recorded enough different interesting parts I’ll start to play around with just sound effects to add extra little ear candy. So I’m kind of building the whole arrangement but in a linear way where I’m only hearing one piece at a time.
A4 has been really amazing for this because it’s so easy to just jump around to different tracks and load up different patches while also playing one polyphonically if I want, or recording one part into the sequencer and then improvising another part on top of it.
This process sounds like absolute heaven to me
Yes, I do this quite a lot!
Recording longer stems of what seems random, but often holds unique little snippets.
Either chopping them up as their own sample which then go into chains for my OT, or they stay as one piece and I p-lock the starting point/ make slices on the OT as needed.
The magic realy comes from your initial thought: One can’t really write out all the automation and modulation for some of sounds!
Random ( LFO + knob twists) = high potential for happy accidents 
Great thread.
Just a few quick thoughts.
Post-Editing can be used as an arranging strategy when your recordings are already complete stereo recordings (full mix of all elements), creating a structure that wasn’t there in the first place. Something that’s been already mentioned here.
Another approach (that personally I find more interesting) is when you use post-editing to assemble a collage of single elements or semi-mixed stems that were created at different moments and never intended to be part of the same track.
They’re all elements that I created, but had never thought of combining together during the compositional or sound design process. I get the most satisfaction and surprise when I use this approach, compared to a more traditional/vertical stacking compositional approach, where you keep adding elements with clear rhythmic/tonal compatibility to a loop or sequence.
About dealing with stereo mixes of long recordings, don’t feel discouraged. There’s a lot you can do nowadays to rebalance those single elements within the mix.
Proper EQ and multi band dynamics can dramatically improve the quality and the balance of the recording.
Duplicating the mix on different tracks, processing them differently (maybe splitting the original recording in separate freq bands) and then combining them back together can really make a huge difference. Just make sure you don’t mess up with your phase alignment.
I’ve also used sample layering when I was feeling a certain element was lacking presence or punch. Just align the recording to the grid and stack samples on top, to augment the original mix.
If you’re worried about having used too much or too little reverb/delay/etc in the mix… That’s simply an artistic choice. 
A lot of music (not just electronic) has been released from just a single stereo recording. If the music feels inspiring and sounds half decent, nobody will ever care about how it was created or mixed.
When I still used Ableton, my default way of working was jamming in the session view (at that time using an ortholinear keyboard for a POS system, because all these pad controllers did not exist back then) and MIDI controllers, recording these jams into the arrangement view and and then editing them down into coherent tracks. That is the workflow Ableton (and of course Bitwig as well) is built around, and it’s really convenient and effective. Since the release of the Akai APC40 (2009) and the subsequent collaborations with Novation etc. dedicated controllers for that workflow are widely available.
Initially that was a really nice workflow for me, because I enjoyed experimenting and performing, and I just did a few edits here and there, but then somehow editing ate up more and more of my time, because I wanted things to be really perfect.
I’m much happier dawless. Haven’t touched Ableton in a decade or so.
Great thread and discussion.
There’s just so many damn ways to make a piece of music. And the joy of that is that most listeners will have no idea what the process was for any given recording they hear.
Sure, an experienced listener might hear familiar production techniques or even a missing crossfade where audio has been cobbled together, but the rest is fundamentally a mystery.
Personally, I don’t use editing much or at all as a compositional tool, in the sense of the OP describing cutting together pieces of different jams or snippets into something new.
I always felt that I might…. But why don’t I?
I don’t have the editing/DAW skills to make it feel easy. By this I mean I’m not proficient to the point of being able to tune out and just play around. I can do what I need to do, but it’s like when you’re learning to touch type, use chopsticks or drive a car.
It takes a lot more time and working memory to ‘process’ audio recordings. Compared to going through say a pile of timber offcuts and thinking up a project you could make with what you have, audio is far more abstract. I suppose if you know your recordings really well it might be easier.
Editing requires a vision. It’s much easier to improvise new parts without knowing where the piece is going than it is to retrospectively cobble those parts together into something new.
If recordings were made with intention, it’s hard to separate the audio from that intention. There can be baggage attached.
The workflow doesn’t suit the styles of music I like to make. Perhaps if I was more locked into a genre with relatively strong boundaries around form and things like BPM, instruments and timbres then it might be possible to put disparate elements together more coherently.
It’s lacking novelty and that glimmer of hope that inspiration might shine down on me today as I channel the muses through me and into a synth or sequencer.
Ultimately it just seems like a really different way of working.
I really like the comparison made to film editing above, and the later argument that working with audio is fundamentally different. I think both perspectives can be true. My takeaway from the film editing analogy is a caricature of making a feature film. There’s the director’s vision for realising the script, which dictates filming and scenes and takes, and which is then reassembled to try and meet a semblance of the original vision. This is probably similar to the caricature of a band working with a producer in the studio. The band has the script, which dictates the fundamental elements recorded, but the producer guides the recording process and the finished product into some potentially different or greater.
I think part of all of us pictures this sort of process being followed for creative work, whether it’s music, film, painting, fine furniture making etc.
But editing together bits of jams and recordings that were never intended to go together is a completely different creative paradigm, like deliberately quoting yourself out of context.
It begs the question - is art the process or the product? Is this post the result of a coherent vision, or is it cobbled together nonsense ideas that I’ve drafted but never posted across multiple threads?
Nice responses. Two reasons I’m interested in this is one, the creative potential of juxtaposing different ideas you might not come up with in ‘writing’ mode. And two, I have such limited time for music that I often commit to finishing tracks that are based off whatever first random idea/experiment I came up with, so no time to delve deeper and explore. I like the idea of jamming for ages and some time later working with a bit of it that really excites me. But committing the idea to audio and taking that as the basis of a new track worries me a little as I can’t then easily write a b section say with exactly the same instrumentation. Quite interested in totally separating creative processes of jamming and then later editing with a box of off-cuts, might lead to interesting results…
A few examples of heavily edited projects that come to mind are rival consoles’ Landscapes from memory, four tet, bibio, boards of Canada have all talked about working from old ideas/diary recordings. Can, future sound of London, The orb, rob henke, cabaret Voltaire I think have all done collage/ edited work. countless more of course…
edit: forgot to mention Talk Talk - laughing stock, one of the greatest pieces of music ever made.
Yeah, another brilliant album, Panda Bear - Person Pitch, has a lot of samples, loops, editing and overdubs.
I think that fundamentally though, the viability of this option is limited by the creativity of the musician / engineer.
Just to touch on this, I know it’s wholly dependent on any one person’s creative process, but I have worse luck when I’m trying to be creative on a mental (or recorded) grid.
I feel like you have to think of audio more like overlapping waves in the ocean: they are rhythmic and they blend seamlessly, but they are not following a rigid schedule. There is a force which keeps them in time, but they are not in perfect linear time, it’s everything working together which keeps them sounding and looking seamless.
This is part of that problem I mentioned before, of recording in multiple sessions with a bunch of different jams, because there are ways to smooth the edges and transitions, but as you do so, you move further and further off the grid. If you’re lucky you end up with an “on the grid” sounding performance.
If you always record in an environment where a grid is ever present, you might have to step out of that arena and try working with the sum of it’s parts, i.e. the stereo track.
Not saying this is “The way” or the only way, but I think that part of this creative editing as a form of symphonic arrangement (for lack of a better term), stacked or overlapping compositional methods, do not always live “on grid”.
It’s something to at least try, if someone has been doing it the other way round. It’s not to say that “clips” are a bad way to work, but I think you get the feel of adjacent loops when you work that way, when what we really want is something that feels cohesive as though it was scripted to be that way. That’s usually my goal at least.
Also, this is not to say you should make the beat intentionally drift or anything like that, more that not every section of useable audio has to be cut precisely on the structure of the grid.
That’s what I’ve been doing for almost 20 years. For me, there is no such thing as a publishable “dawless jam” (unless you are Jim O’Rourke). It has to be edited as much as possible and turned into something fundamentally different.
Editing is the most important component of my creative process. I record random pieces and then endlessly hyper edit and glue everything back together in completely different arrangements. I tend to have a vague idea of what I want when I start but within the editing process things tend to take very different shapes.